Do you want the SATA drives in RAID? If not, you could use the PCIe for a system disk and a powered USB hub for storage disks. The powered hub I have would handle three of the biggest SSDs. The Pi 5 has two USB 3 ports with separate bandwidth which means two hubs would have only three disks each.
For RAID, USB disks can be a problem I have not tackled.
There is a big choice of slower SSDs for USB 3 and low cost USB enclosures. SATA storage devices are not much different in speed to USB 3. You could also buy NVMe SSDs for a similar price to SATA SSDs (PCIe 3 NVMe) and the enclosures are a similar price. The NVMe would be ready for a Pi 6 or 7.![:D]( "Very Happy")
If you are worried about SSD life, refresh them with a move every year. Six magnetic disks will almost always produce at least one failure in the first year which means you need a backup, the same as SSD. I am using a 12 year (cheapest back then) drive that has never lost data despite years of abuse and one stint of 4 years in storage between uses. It just booted as if it were 4 days.
For RAID, USB disks can be a problem I have not tackled.
There is a big choice of slower SSDs for USB 3 and low cost USB enclosures. SATA storage devices are not much different in speed to USB 3. You could also buy NVMe SSDs for a similar price to SATA SSDs (PCIe 3 NVMe) and the enclosures are a similar price. The NVMe would be ready for a Pi 6 or 7.
If you are worried about SSD life, refresh them with a move every year. Six magnetic disks will almost always produce at least one failure in the first year which means you need a backup, the same as SSD. I am using a 12 year (cheapest back then) drive that has never lost data despite years of abuse and one stint of 4 years in storage between uses. It just booted as if it were 4 days.
Statistics: Posted by peterlite — Mon Sep 16, 2024 6:18 am